1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wireless selective call receiver, and more particularly, to a wireless selective call receiver capable of performing a predetermined screen display in a reception wait state.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional wireless selective call receiver displays only a current time or one character data stored in advance on a display unit while in a reception wait state, as shown in a "POCKET BELL HANDBOOK" of NTT DoCoMo.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating the circuit structure of the conventional wireless selective call receiver. In FIG. 1, the conventional wireless selective call receiver is composed of an antenna 10, a receiving circuit 12, a decoder 14, an operation unit 16, a control unit 18 including a switch circuit 18a, a display unit 20, a random access memory (RAM) 22, and a read only memory (ROM) 24.
The antenna 10 receives a radio call signal. The receiving circuit 12 demodulates the radio call signal received by the antenna 10 to convert into a digital signal. The decoder 14 extracts a message signal from the digital signal converted by the receiving circuit 12 to output to a control unit 18. Also, the decoder 14 inputs an operation signal from the operation unit 16 and decodes it to output this operation signal to the control unit 18 as an operation data. The operation unit 16 is operated by a user and outputs the operation signal to the decoder 14 in accordance with the operation by the user. For example, the operation unit 16 is used to set a time.
The control unit 18 controls various operations of the above wireless selective call receiver. When the message signal is outputted from the decoder 14, the control unit 18 stores this message signal in the RAM 22. The control unit 18 includes the switching circuit 18a for controlling the switching of display contents on a display unit 20 which includes a liquid crystal panel. This switching circuit 18a switches the screen display among a reception wait display in the reception wait state, a message display for displaying a message when the message is received, and an input screen display which is displayed when the user operates the operation unit 16. Also, the control unit 18 reads the message signal which has been written in the RAM 22 and reads the image data corresponding to the read message signal from the ROM 24 to output to the display unit 20. The above operation is performed based on various programs stored in the ROM 24. Further, the control unit 18 includes a clock section which is not illustrated in the figure for counting a time.
The RAM 22 stores the above-mentioned message signal and, in addition, stores a character string which is to be displayed on the display unit 20 when in the reception wait state. The character string is stored advance by operating the operation unit 16 by the user. Also, the ROM 24 stores various programs used to control the operation of the wireless selective call receiver in addition to the image data of the above character string.
In the above structure, when a radio call signal is not being received by the antenna 10 such that a message signal is not outputted from the decoder 14, the switching circuit 18a switches the screen display of the display unit 20 to the reception wait display. The control unit 18 reads image data from the ROM 24 based on the current time of the clock section. For example, if the current time is 2:30, the image data of "2", ":", "3", and "0" are read out from the ROM 24, and produces a character string image data of "2:30" to output to the display unit 20.
In the state in which the reception wait display is performed on the display unit 20, when a radio call signal is received by the antenna 10, the decoder 14 extracts a message from the digital signal which is outputted from the receiving circuit 12, and outputs the extracted message signal to the control unit 18. The control unit 18 first stores this message signal in the RAM 22. Next, the switching circuit 18a switches the screen display of the display unit 20 to the message display.
Next, the control unit 18 searches the ROM 24 for image data of characters based on the message signal which has been stored in the RAM 22, to produce a character string image data. Then, the control unit 18 outputs the character string image data to the display unit 20. When the screen display of the display unit 20 is set to the message display, the switching circuit 18a switches the screen display to the reception wait display, if a predetermined time period elapses. Also, when the character string which is to be displayed in the reception wait state is stored in the RAM 22, the control unit 18 reads out the character string to output to the display unit 20.
By the way, in the conventional wireless selective call receiver, only a current time or a character string which has been stored in advance in the RAM 22 is displayed on the display unit 20 in reception wait state. Therefore, no device is not accomplished to provide the contents displayed on the display unit as a part of the design on the outer appearance of the receiver.
In recent years, the wireless selective call receiver is demanded to have a display unit of a large screen size. Thus, the ratio of the screen of the display unit to the whole of wireless selective call receiver becomes large. In other words, because the beauty of the outer appearance of the wireless selective call receiver depends mainly on the contents displayed on the display unit, the contents displayed on the display unit become a very important element on the outward appearance.